Wife, mom and try-to-DIYer

I love making presents for people whenever possible. Adults are a lot harder because they usually want something specific or that is outside my DIY realm. Littles are by far the easiest to make homemade gifts for!

This little quiet book is one that I made for my niece Sloan when she turned 1. I love that she can practice her colors and shapes with this book. The shapes can all be lifted off, so it starts out with the shapes on a page near the back. She c an then move them to the correct corresponding page!

She is already almost 2 years old and I never got pictures of her with it, yikes! We took some time  playing with it last week and I snuck a few photos. Since I get to watch these two nieces once a week it wasn’t too hard. Getting my daughter and her older sister to leave her alone while she played with it was another story!

On the first page I made a simple rainbow shape out of (most of) the colors of the rainbow.

On the second page I sewed a rectangle of red and cut out a simple apple shape.

On the third page I sewed a rectangle of orange and cut out a little fishy shape.

On the fourth page I sewed a rectangle of yellow and cut out a fun sun shape.

On the fifth page I sewed a rectangle of green and cut out a leaf shape.

On the sixth page I sewed a rectangle of blue and cut out a butterfly shape.

On the seventh page I sewed a rectangle of purple and cut out a little flower shape.

On the eighth page is where all of the shapes can live if they aren’t on their color coordinated page.

At the end of the book I added a half pocket for some blank index cards and an insert for 4 crayons. Miss Sloan loves to scribble so I knew this would be a hit. I hope that they can get some use out of it when they go out to eat or just need some peace and quiet!

A little about how I made it:

The book is almost entirely made of felt. The only other materials used were ribbons for the binding. I made the shapes by hand drawing the simplest objects possible and cutting them from felt.  I added velcro to the shapes so that they could be moved around.  To make the pages I used four large pieces of felt folded in half rather than 8 pages. This decision was made because I’m lazy, so I chose the easiest path possible.  After I got the permanent details sewn onto each page (the colored rectangles and velcro) I used a zig zag stitch along the edges to sew the pages together and finish it off. I made 2 button holes in the center of each double page and fed the ribbons through to tie it off. Prior to sewing the pages together I added the pocket for the index cards. The last thing I did was add crayon holders at the end of the book by sewing a few small lines on a pocket to separate each of them. It looks a little wonky but Sloan has never complained! 😉